Im developing a 2-d game with Gamestudios where im going to have a bunch of troops rendered in DAZ studio set against "real life" photgraphic backgrounds. Like So:



As you can see, the rendered unit really stands out against the background. I was wondering what I could do to the background to "cartoonize" it a little more so that the troops and the backgrounds blend together a little better.

Hi there

Maybe you could edit the images in a image software applying filters to achieve it ? Would be the easyest way, altought there are toon shadres also around the forums.

Commercial plugin to Photoshop :

http://www.digitalanarchy.com/toonPS/main.html

A tutorial to do almost the same in GIMP :

http://ocaoimh.ie/2004/10/01/cartoonizing-photos-with-the-gimp/

I dont know if this is what you want.

Anyway, good luck.

ps. : Looking good, keep it up !

Cya.

Hmm, what about fixing the current files, would look better then "toon" effect.

OH wow! MTD some of those look really awesome. I think this just might be the way to go. How did you clean up them up? (Im more or less a n00b with photoshop and with graphics in general).

Also, if you had just bought a game and these were the graphics, what would be your honest impression of the game at that point? IF i "clean up" the troops instead of the background, do you think that those graphics would work from a gaming perspective?

Hmm... I'm not a pro in graphic, simply clipped out the char.
If You have some sample files, then You could try to clean up them in GIMP (or give them to me, will try to help).

About the graphic. It would be interesting, because I really don't know many games with this style.
Maybe You have some reference games ?

Remembered only this one:
[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQnbGeXlkiw[/video]

As for reference games, i havent seen any with this graphical style either, but the gameplay itself is based off of "tower defender" type games like the following:

http://www.addictinggames.com/strategy-games/clan-wars-game.jsp

Basically, your tower makes troops and so does the enemy AIs tower, each troop marches towards the others towers, engaging enemy troops along the way. When they reach the enemy tower, they attack it until the towers HP are zero. the first tower to zero HP is destroyed and looses.